The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
By Bessel Van Der Kolk
Why this book?
The best books that have a connection with trauma
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Browse the best books on PTSD as recommended by authors, experts, and creators. Along with notes on why they recommend those books.
Coming Fall 2022: The ability to sort this list by genre (signup here to follow our story as we build a better way to discover books).
By Bessel Van Der Kolk
The best books that have a connection with trauma
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
By James Bradley, Ron Powers
In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley recounts a story not so unlike my own and many other sons born of this generation of leathernecks. James is the son of John Bradley, who served on Iwo Jima as a corpsman and was awarded the Navy Cross for his service. He also was one of the boys who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi.
Flags is the result of James Bradley’s research and interviews with survivors of the battle for Iwo Jima, after his father’s passing. At times Flags reads like an action thriller, its battle sequences authentic not only…
The best books about PTSD and overcoming oppression of the human spirit
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By Jennifer Hartmann
This romance caught me off guard. It was a dark romance about a kidnapped man and a woman. The heroine and her sister's fiancé who she disliked. I have to say this book isn’t for everyone as the sensitive subject matter is written about, such as rape and also a suicide attempt. However, because of Hartmann’s amazing way with words, I can’t stop thinking about this book and the characters. Hartmann’s exquisite writing style took me into the basement where the couple was kept. I felt fear and sadness for them. I felt hope. I felt so many things that…
The best romance novels that stay with you long after you finish them
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By Judith Lewis Herman
When I was trying to understand my own childhood trauma, Dr. Judith Herman's trauma and recovery made the most sense to me. The study of trauma, she wrote, has a curious history. Not only individuals, but entire societies have alternated between periods of remembering and periods of forgetting. Judith Herman was trained as a physician and came into contact with patients who had been sexually abused as a psychiatric resident. Her ability to integrate history, medicine, psychology, feminism, and literature into her book was indispensable to me.
Shame, secrecy, and silence, she wrote, were the deadly trio that prolonged the…
The best books on trauma and recovery
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By Ellen Hopkins
Closer to Nowhere explores family dynamics and ‘tween feelings in an honest and realistic way. Two cousins – as opposite as left and right – seem to constantly be at odds. When they take time to actually communicate with each other, they realize they have more in common than they thought. Told in alternating POVs, the reader shares Cal and Hannah’s struggles as they tell them. Told with honesty and compassion.
The best middle grade novels in verse with emotional themes
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By Paula Munier
This series is interesting due to the complexity of the characters. Mercy, the main character, an ex-military police officer, and her dog Elvis, also ex-military and suffering from canine PTSD are sent home from action. Both of the characters are wounded and grieving the loss of one man-Mercy’s fiance and Elvis’s handler. Along with a compelling mystery the two stumble upon, the readers also get an understanding of the incredible power dogs have to help humans heal.
We often reveal much more of ourselves to our canine companions and the reader is able to learn more about the human characters…
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